In its 25th year as a
daily, the 102 year-old Sparks Tribune moved to twice-per-week
publication as of 1 Sept. 2012. Alas and alack, the publishers have
not done a very good job informing our readers and the general public.
I've been getting phone calls. The print edition will now be published
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Four longtime columnists have been retained:
David Farside, Jake
Highton, Harry Spencer and the Barbwire.
The newspaper's website will continue to publish stories on a daily
basis.

Everybody knows the dice
are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.Everybody knows the
scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will discloseWhat
everybody knows.

The
program premiers were available to every television set in the region
because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate
entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which
generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online
at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service
and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno
NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing
efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate
community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media
model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on
the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass
the message upward.

Like the women in front of the Reno courthouse, workers are part of a numerical
majority that remains shortchanged.

Adjusted for inflation, the average American worker hasn't had a raise since
1973.

The moneyed minority rules.

Corporations (now legally
people) can buy media, lawyers and lobbyists all subsidized by taxpayers as
deductible business expenses.

Unions are America's
most heavily regulated organizations while Wall Street waltzes all the way to
the bank.

We still celebrate the myth of an America built by rugged individualism when
in reality this country was forged through teamwork, unified effort.

We all belong to one
big union, the United States.

For all the recent
demonization of words like feminist, union, liberal and progressive, this country
was forged by collective endeavor toward common goals.

The chamber of commerce is thus arguably a union. So are the National Organization
for Women, Planned Parenthood, UNR football and the National Rifle Association.
All are textbook examples of successful cooperative effort.

Many states have passed or are considering laws to make voting as difficult
as possible.

Voters don't have a National Rifle Association which has made it easier to buy
a gun than cast a ballot in many places.

Maybe the NRA should
diversify.

So think kindly of the 50 demonstrators, mostly wearing pink, who assembled
at the Reno courthouse a few days ago.

Those representatives of the majority showed up to remind us that no matter
the label, the work toward equal opportunity continues and the dream will never
die.

Dream on.

SUPPORT
THE NEVADA CITIZEN TV PROJECT to re-establish a non-corporate community
channel.

As political ads increasingly
shotgun your consciousness, do you not feel the burn  and the burning
need?

ADIÓS,
COMPADRE  Our friend Travus,
75, passed away peacefully between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. PDT on
18 May 2012 at his home in Silver City, Nevada.
The sun is in eclipse as I write this at 6:30 p.m. on May 20.

CHANGE OF
VENUE (5-22-2012)  Adiós in Silver City, Nevada,
Saturday, May 26, 2012 > Updated 5-27-2012  >
The auld church where Travus lived and died proved too small
for the expected multitude, so gathering, gnoshing and remembering
commenced at the Silver City Community Center, 385 High Street,
at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The graveside memorial service began at High
Noon. Travus was buried next to his rock star companion Lynne
Hughes, a short walk away. My remembrance of Lynne from
the 3-21-1993 Daily Sparks Tribune has been linked to
Travus' formal obituary
at this website. All
memories accepted for permanent posting hereat. Stay tuned
for pictures and stories of the appropriately rainy day.

Thanks for all your
kind words. Keep up the good work and the good fight.

At
bottom, he was an artist who used his voice to soar and slice, a
tenor for the tenor of our times. Many of his mourning California
listeners talk about the vocal spells he wove, how he soundly organized
the noise of daily life into music that entertained, engaged, enlightened,
educated, enthralled and occasionally enflamed.[From
the saga of Travus T.
Hipp and contributions by The Barbwire to the May 25
Reno Gazette-Journal
and May
26, 2012,
Daily Sparks Tribune.]

From
clear-cut forests to dirty Gulfstream waters, this land belongs
to old BPTOLJASO LONG TIME AGOBP/ARCO: The greasy
root of our evilsBarbwire
/ Daily Sparks Tribune 9-10-2006The
awful truth  Read it and weep, fellow suckers

By
one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about
$3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public
opinion to suit big business goals.Lapham's
number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey
noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures
had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for
inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)

Adjusted
for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04
in 2005 dollars.

Conservatives
Help Wal-Mart, and Vice VersaAs Wal-Mart
struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable
ally: conservative research groups.New
York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.